Although you may think of the fun, albeit slightly dangerous kids toy when you hear the word pogo-sticking, it has a completely different meaning in SEO. Pogo sticking is an important user signal that tells Google and other search engines that a visitor wasn’t happy with what it found on your web page.

Search engines use this signal as part of their ranking algorithm, meaning that it can directly impact your search engine performance.

But, what is pogo-sticking, exactly? And how does it impact your search engine performance?

In this post, we’ll cover pogo-sticking in more detail, answering both these questions, and more!

Please feel free to send us a message if you’d like to see whether we can help improve your search engine performance. We have extensive experience helping companies improve their Google ranking and would love to see how we can best support your business too.

What is pogo sticking?

Pogo sticking is when a search engine user clicks on a search result and then goes back to click on the next result. This tells the search engine that the user wasn’t able to find what they were looking for on the first page, or at the very least wasn’t happy with the web page.

Why it’s important for SEO

Pogo sticking is one of the many user signals that search engines use to gauge the quality of a web page. If a large number of people visit the page and then leave to go to the next page, it tells the search engine that users aren’t finding the information they’re looking for on the first page they click on.

This could be because the search engine is ranking the wrong page for a particular search, or it could be that the first page users visit just doesn’t provide all the information they need. Either way, it can be a reason to lower the page in the search results and test other pages that seem to perform better.

User signals have become an increasingly important ranking factor, meaning that pogo-sticking could directly impact your search engine performance!

How can pogo-sticking be prevented?

Although you can’t directly prevent users from leaving your page and looking for the information they’re after elsewhere, there are some steps you can take to reduce the number of visitors that pogo-stick to another web page.

Improving your content

The most important thing you can do is provide your visitors with all the information they need. This could mean improving your blog posts, or it could mean extending the content on your product/service pages.

Linking internally

Linking to supporting content internally will help to reduce your bounce rate as well as pogo-sticking. It will also help to increase the average number of pages a user views before exiting your website.

It’s common for a topic to be too large to fit all the information someone may need onto a single page. Linking to other pages on your website can help you provide more information without cluttering up the site.

Linking externally

In the same way that internal links can offer supporting information, external links can too. The only difference is that the user leaves your website when they click on an external link. Although this means that pogo-sticking can be reduced, it won’t help your other user metrics as much as internal links.

Improving usability

Improving the overall usability of your website is another way of reducing pogo-sticking since it can make it easier for a visitor to find the information they’re after.

Improving your page load times

Your page speed is another important factor. By ensuring your website loads quickly you can prevent visitors from leaving and visiting another page out of frustration.

Conclusion

As is the case with all user signals, reducing pogo-sticking can be a complicated matter. Not only does it require a solid understanding of people’s behaviour, but it also requires a lot of experience to do effectively.

Working with an agency can help to improve your user signals as well as your search engine performance.

Here at Racer, we offer web design, marketing and SEO services, helping you tackle all of the different possible causes of pogo-sticking. If you’re interested in finding out how we can help your company perform better online, send us a message via the chat feature on our website or give us a call.